Help us increase knowledge about healthy couple relationship education programs!

We are looking for couples to participate in a paid evaluation project coordinated through Auburn University. Pre-registration starts now! All couples who register will have the opportunity to participate in one of three groups. Assignment to groups will be randomly assigned and all individuals will be asked to complete program evaluation surveys (3 the first year; 1 the next year; and 1 the following year).* Groups include:

Participate in ELEVATE, a relationship education program that teaches couples how to take their relationship skills to the next level by focusing on core relationship skills.

Classes meet weekly every Thursday for 6 weeks and end March 6th, 2017.

Meals and Childcare will be provided.

To enroll Call The Circle of Care (334) 768-4091

*All individuals in all groups will be compensated for their time completing the program evaluation surveys (each will take 30-60 minutes to complete). Each person can earn up to $300 over two years for completing the program evaluation surveys.

Parental divorce reduces the likelihood that children will graduate from college, and achieve high-status jobs.

Children who live with their own two married parents enjoy better physical health, on average, than children in other family forms. The health advantages of married homes remain even after taking into account socioeconomic status.

Parental divorce approximately doubles the odds that adult children will end up divorced.

About Men

Married men earn between 10 and 40 percent more than single men with similar education and job histories.

Married people, especially married men, have longer life expectancies than otherwise similar singles.

Marriage increases the likelihood fathers will have good relationships with children. Sixty-five percent of young adults whose parents divorced had poor relationships with their fathers (compared to 29% from non-divorced families).

About Women

Divorce and unmarried childbearing significantly increases poverty rates of both mothers and children. Between one-fifth and one-third of divorcing women end up in poverty as a result of divorce.

Married mothers have lower rates of depression than single or cohabiting mothers.

Married women appear to have a lower risk of domestic violence than cohabiting or dating women. Even after controlling for race, age, and education, people who live together are still three times more likely to report violent arguments than married people.

About Society

Adults who live together but do not marry—cohabitors—are more similar to singles than to married couples in terms of physical health and disability, emotional well-being and mental health, as well as assets and earnings. Their children more closely resemble the children of single people than the children of married people.

Marriage appears to reduce the risk that children and adults will be either perpetrators or victims of crime. Single and divorced women are four to five times more likely to be victims of violent crime in any given year than married women. Boys raised in single-parent homes are about twice as likely (and boys raised in stepfamilies three times as likely) to have committed a crime that leads to incarceration by the time they reach their early thirties, even after controlling for factors such as race, mother’s education, neighborhood quality and cognitive ability.